


Immersion

by kythen



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drowning, Gen, Not Human
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1829056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/kythen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kuroko belongs to the water – or rather, he used to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for repeated mentions of drowning. Stay safe and stay away if that makes you feel uncomfortable, guys.

As his head breaks through the water's surface, droplets slide off the tips of his hair to return to its kin below and Kuroko takes a breath, allowing oxygen to rush into his lungs. He expels it as carbon dioxide and gasps, more air forcing its way down his windpipe and into his body, which tells him that it needs more than this.  _Human bodies cannot survive in water,_ a reminder from some time ago surfaces in his head, and he lets his hands fall back down, where they break through the surface of the water and make it slosh up against the sides of the bathtub.

 _Humans are so painfully weak,_ he thinks. His hands, submerged under the water, flex and he thinks that this is where they belong, as do the rest of him, where the liquid flow envelopes him in its comfortable hold. This is where he was born and where he is meant to live in all his life. He is not meant for this life above the water, with his legs firmly planted on the ground at all times and his body so light that he worries that he might float off into the air.

He wants to go back to the water, the proper water, which stretches out further than the human eye can see, an eternal sea road that goes on forever. In there he was free, not confined like how he is now in this uselessly human body.

He lets his body go limp, sliding down the porcelain curve of the bathtub's sides until his nose is barely above the surface of the water. It's too clean, the way the water in the bathtub smells, too sterilised, everything good about it removed by the humans. That was what it means to be human for you, always changing things to suit their needs and not caring if the nature of what they changed was lost to them.

 _They're so selfish,_ he thinks and then lets the rest of him slip home into the water. _I don't want to be one of them._

\---

Kuroko would have died if Momoi had come screaming to him a moment later, telling him that something was just not right. Aomine can't exactly call it a daily occurrence, but it's been too many times that he's found himself hauling a near-lifeless body out of their bathtub, Momoi nearly in tears beside him as she gropes for a pulse, a sign of life, anything that could tell her that Kuroko is still alive and not as dead as he looks.

It's almost a routine when he drags Kuroko into the living room and throws him onto the floor (the uncarpeted area, for good reasons). Momoi already has a towel and a fresh set of clothes ready, averting her eyes as Aomine struggles to get the sopping clothes off Kuroko's uncooperative body. Only after he finally gets Kuroko into some semblance of decency does he tap her on the shoulder and she turns back to help him with the rest.

The end result is a moderately dry Kuroko laid out on their living room floor, whatever little colour he had in the first place returning to his face. Aomine sits back, the front of his clothes damp and sticking to his body uncomfortably, and Momoi drops onto the floor with him, looking as worn out as he feels.

"This can't keep happening," he exhales deeply, feeling all the air rush out of his lungs. "Somebody needs to get it into his head that we need to breathe, not underwater, but _above_ the water."

Momoi eyes him from where she sits. "What do you think we've been trying to do for the past month? He doesn't want to listen."

"Why does he have to be so difficult?" Aomine groans, burying his face in his hands. "He's going to try to do this drowning thing again and one day we won't be able to haul his ass up fast enough and then-"

Momoi smacks him with the palm of her hand and her glare is more than enough to tell him what she thinks of his careless remark.

"I'm sorry." Kuroko's voice breaks into their conversation and they watch as he blinks, slowly pulling himself back into consciousness.

"Yeah, you ought to be." Aomine scowls at him and Momoi, emotional as ever, throws her arms around Kuroko as he sits up.

"Can you stop doing this?" she tells him, her face buried in the crook of his neck. "You're not what you used to be; you're human now."

Kuroko pats the back of her head reassuringly as he says, "Yes, I understand. I'm sorry."

But his eyes are dull and devoid of sincerity when he says this and Aomine knows that he'll be dragging him back out of the water again before the week is up.

\---

Things washed up on the beach all the time. Seashells, litter, the occasional message in a bottle. Very rarely were there bodies, and even if there were, they were usually of the dead variety before anyone got to them.

Which was why it was so startling to stumble across a prone body while taking a walk by the shore, after waking up just before dawn with the sudden urge to feel the sand beneath his toes. Aomine's first instinct was to just call the police and have them deal with this, but when he saw the shallow rise and fall of the boy's chest, an unmistakable sign that he was still breathing and therefore alive, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

He rolled the boy onto his back, fingers feeling for a pulse and finding it faint against the tips of his fingers. Then he shrugged off his jacket, draped it across the boy's torso and called Momoi.

She answered on the fifth ring, which was pretty impressive considering her natural instinct to ignore all calls from him when they came at ungodly hours. "This better be good."

"I've got a near dead body with me at moment, which I did not have a hand in causing." he added the last bit hurriedly before she could break out the accusations.

There was a pause, where he could almost picture her pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. "Where are you?" she finally said, sounding as if she had resigned herself to the fact that he was Aomine Daiki and fated to be involved in all sorts of ludicrous situations as decreed by the gods.

"The beach. In fact..." There was a sheen of water covering the boy's body, drenching his hair and turning his skin ice-cold in the morning chill. The smell of saltwater and fish was strong and he was pretty certain that it wasn't only coming from the sea. "I think he came from the sea."

Another long pause and then, "Have you already called the police?"

"Nope. Unless that includes you."

She was holding back a sigh, he could almost hear it. "Bring him back to our place. I'll get Midorima to come over later and check him over."

"Okay." He hung up on her and tucked his phone back into his pocket, regarding the boy on the sand with a long look. The boy was stark naked and he made sure to secure the jacket around all important parts before he pulled him up into a fireman's carry. "Wouldn't it be a laugh if you turned out to be a merman or something?" he told the boy as he trod back home in the bare pre-dawn light.

\---

"You don't have to do this. I won't do it again."

Aomine snorts from his seat on the toilet bowl, its lid down and him cross-legged on it. "I don't trust you."

To be fair, Kuroko doesn't trust himself either. It's hard to, when he is so close to the water. Maybe this time, he can do it, get the water to reclaim him as own of its own and release him from this land-bound form he was stuck in. It's so easy to think like that when he watches the bathtub fill up with water, swirling patterns dancing invitingly in its midst. Too easy.

"Don't do anything stupid." Aomine calls from his perch, shifting one leg up and arming himself with a magazine. His eyes are fixed on the spread out of Horikita Mai before him but every now and then, Kuroko can see him look up fleetingly, just to make sure that Kuroko is still there and not submerged, breathing in water again.

Kuroko moves his shoulders up in a slight shrug then slips into the bathtub, small waves breaking around him as he breeches the water's surface. It's comforting, the way the water crowds around him as he slides down fully into the bathtub, even if it doesn't sing like how it used to whenever he came into contact with it. Now, when he lifts a hand clear of the water, it spills through his fingers instead of dancing around them. When he lowers his head under its surface, there's nothing but a hollow silence awaiting him underwater, the water trying to force itself into his nose and mouth, a clear rejection of his human body.

Sometimes – or maybe always – he wonders if he lets the water back into him, would it welcome him back as one of its own?

He doesn't get the chance to test that theory out as hands grab his shoulders and pull him bodily out of the water, a certain urgency in its actions. For a disorienting second, Kuroko fights the hands, diving back towards the water – a natural instinct – and he almost succeeds, with his body slick with bath water and soap, making it difficult for anyone to get a grip on him. But then Aomine curses and shifts his grip on Kuroko so that he has an arm wrapped around his waist which makes it easier to wrestle him out of the bathtub and onto the bathroom floor.

There's something uncomfortably damp under him, which sticks to his skin when he shifts slightly and he reaches for it absently, coming face-to-face with the increasingly familiar face of Horikita Mai when he holds it up. Beyond the soggy magazine, he sees Aomine above him and a frown directed down at him.

"You have _issues_ , man." Aomine tells him for the umpteenth time and plucks the ruined magazine out of his hands. He smoothens what is left of it with a scowl and then lays it down somewhere behind him. "How long were you planning to stay underwater?"

"Not very long." comes to Kuroko's mouth straight away and the shared thought that comes to both of them is _liar_.

\---

As the spring rains give way to the scorching glare of the summer sun, it becomes a scene that has been played out so many times between the three of them that it has sort of become a routine in their lives. Aomine finds himself inexplicably drawn to the bathroom every few minutes, listening for the subtle sound of still water and peering into the porcelain midst of the bathtub. Momoi has given up on preserving the carpeting in their living room, tearing it up one day and keeping it stored somewhere at the back of the house. What replaces it is a square of clear plastic, taped down in a corner of their living room and just about big enough to accommodate Kuroko's body.

There is always one of them in the house at any given time, the both of them having carefully planned out their shifts around Kuroko. When Momoi returns after a day at the police station, Aomine slaps a hand across her open palm, tagging in for his shift and leaving Kuroko in her care. After two months of staying with them, the number of times they find Kuroko almost drowning has decreased, thankfully, but it is still something that happens when they leave Kuroko alone for too long. Neither of them dare to let Kuroko out of their sight, which is harder than it sounds, and neither of them dare to let him out of the house, where a five minute walk down the road outside leads to the beach where Aomine had first found Kuroko. Fishing a scrawny boy out of the bathtub was one thing, but finding him, let alone rescuing him, in the sea was a whole other thing and something they would rather avoid if possible.

"Kuroko-kun," She finds him sitting on the sofa in their living room, a book in hand as he looks up at the sound of her voice.

After coming to terms that he would not be returning to the water anytime soon, Momoi had tried to cheer him up by showing him all the wonderful things beyond water contained in reference books and encyclopaedias she had borrowed off Midorima. She had forgotten that he couldn't read then, but two months of being cooped up in the house with nothing to do had been productive for his education. When he wasn't trying to drown, Kuroko was a fast learner, teaching himself how to read through the books she had procured for him and steadily picking up vocabulary as he pored through the simpler texts before moving on to the more wordy ones at the bottom of his stack of books. His grasp on the English language wasn't quite sophisticated enough for him to be reading literary books, but he seemed to enjoy Midorima's books, which were chock-full of information on the world.

"Welcome back, Momoi-san." he greets her softly, and Momoi thinks – not for the first time – that if Aomine has just ten percent of the manners Kuroko has, the world would be a much better place for everyone.

She settles herself next to him and he puts his book down carefully after marking the page he had stopped at. "Say, Kuroko-kun, I know you must be bored staying at home all day."

"I have the books you lent to me."

"But reading shouldn’t be the only thing you should be doing. Do you want to see the rest of the outside world?" It’s a topic she has been discussing with Aomine for some time. As much as they would like to keep Kuroko away from the sea, which is hard considering that their house is so conveniently located next to it, it wasn't healthy to be keeping him at home all day. In fact, she's surprised that he hasn't mentioned it yet.

Kuroko doesn't say anything immediately, keeping his expression blank. She could never really read him, even though she could read everyone else like an open book, and so she waits, keeping her eyes trained on his face. Finally, he lifts his eyes to meet hers and she can see the ocean he longs for so much echoed in their depths as he gives her a small smile. "Yes, I think that would be nice. Thank you, Momoi-san."

\---

For a change, Kuroko finds himself visiting Midorima, instead of the doctor coming over to Aomine and Momoi's shared home to take a look at him. Since Kuroko's arrival at their house, he has met Midorima a grand total of two times and one of that times had been when he was unconscious and newly formed as a human being. He had been conscious for their second meeting and while he can't quite say that he is fond of Midorima with his stiff attitude and unspoken disapproval of Kuroko's odd existence, he can tell that Midorima isn't a bad person. A bit annoying, but not bad.

Midorima's house is somewhere by the sea too and on the way to it, he notices that Aomine stands on his left, keeping himself firmly between Kuroko and the sea at all times, as if worried that Kuroko would suddenly make a break for it. Momoi chatters away the whole time they are outside, keeping his attention on her and distracting him from the pull of the water on his other side.

Their fears are not entirely unfounded, seeing that the first time they had let him leave the house, the breeze had carried the nostalgic scent of the sea to him and then he was off, his legs straining under him as he ran towards the body of water he belonged in. Aomine had caught up with him before he had even reached the beach and had picked him off the ground easily, holding his thrashing body tightly as he walked back to their house with a grim look on his face. The next time had gone slightly better, even if they had gone nowhere near the beach, and it took a few more short exclusions close to the house before they deemed it alright for him to go a bit further. Momoi had suggested visiting Midorima and Aomine had no strong objections to that which had then led them to where they were at the moment.

It takes precisely three Aomine-strength knocks for Midorima to answer his door, looking more than a bit harassed and not entirely happy to see them. Aomine claims that it is his default expression, but Kuroko doesn't quite believe him. He is quite sure it takes a fair bit of effort to wear an expression like that on your face all the time. The books had told him that there were approximately forty-three muscles in a human's face and Kuroko thinks that it probably takes all of them to constantly make an expression like that.

"What do you want?" comes Midorima's greeting as he nudges his spectacles up with taped fingers and gazes down at all of them. From the way he doesn't invite them in, Kuroko can tell that Aomine and Momoi probably hadn't warned him that they would be coming over.

Not one to back down, Momoi gives Midorima her most disarming smile. "Don't be so mean, Midorima-kun. We came all this way to visit you and look!" She pushes Kuroko to the front and he finds himself staring straight into Midorima's face. Or neck, to be precise, because height differences were pesky like that. "We brought Kuroko."

Midorima looks supremely unimpressed, but he lets them all in anyway. It probably went against his morals to let guests, uninvited or not, stand outside his front door for so long.

Midorima's house is vastly different from the one Aomine and Momoi shares. Where the house Kuroko has grown used to is haphazardly packed at best and a messy amalgamation of both Aomine and Momoi's very strong and distinct personalities, Midorima's house can be described as quiet and meticulously organised, much like the man himself. Shelves line the inside of his house, thick tomes of non-fiction occupying the space within them and the titles of most of them seem like medical texts to him. There are a few about astronomy and horoscopes but they reach the guest room before Kuroko can take a closer look at them.

Upon taking a seat on the sofa, Kuroko finds himself at eye level with something that looks very out of place against the polished wood of Midorima's house. There's a small statuette of a strange creature standing atop the coffee table, a woven straw hat perched on its head and a cheerful manner to its posture. It doesn't match any animal he has seen in his books and he keeps its image in mind for future reference.

Momoi appears to notice his staring contest with it and she leans over, a hand covering her smile as she tells him, "That's a Shigaraki tanuki. They're good luck charms that people place at the entrances of their shops and homes."

"Midorima may not look like it, but he's actually a really superstitious guy." Aomine adds from across, his head thrown back and his arms stretched out along the back of the sofa. "He's always carrying around his lucky item for the day and he always had this phrase that he would say... How did it go again?"

A head of green enters Kuroko's line of vision as Midorima returns and places the tea on the table, whisking the smiling Shiragaki tanuki away from sight. "Man proposes, God disposes."

"That was the one!"

Midorima regards Aomine with a disapproving look. "What do you guys want? Surely you haven't come all this way just to see what my lucky item is for today."

"We just wanted to see you, Midorima-kun." Momoi answers, all sweetness in her voice, which no one in the room actually buys. "Incidentally, look, we brought Kuroko."

"So I've been told." Midorima remarks dryly. "Congratulations on getting him out of the house."

"It took a while before he stopped running off at the first sight of the sea." Aomine says, a long-suffering air to his words.

"Does he still try to drown himself every day?"

"It's every other day now, thank god. I don't think me and Satsuki could have kept up with him any longer."

Kuroko averts his eyes, abashed. The conversation flies over his head, the three of them so obviously comfortable in their familiarity, even if Midorima doesn't want to admit it and the other two pair up to poke fun at him every once in a while.

Momoi had told him that they had gone to school together and played something called basketball in the same team, which had brought them together whether they liked it or not. They were good at basketball, even if Kuroko didn't exactly know what that was and what would have been considered as good. There had been some rough times that they went through as a team, but in the end everything worked out fine and they had graduated into society without much of a hitch. They led pretty normal lives and were pretty normal people, Aomine had interjected at that point of time, until Kuroko had showed up.

"So, what is it that you want to ask me?" Midorima asks bluntly and Kuroko turns his attention back to the conversation at hand. "You wouldn't have brought Kuroko all the way here without a reason."

Without batting an eye, Momoi tells him, "We still can't figure out what Kuroko had been exactly before he became human and he can't remember anything other than the water."

Midorima raises an eyebrow. "So?"

"We thought you might have some idea of what Kuroko might have been."

"He's human as far as I know. I was the one who did his check-up after all."

"I wasn't human before." Kuroko abruptly interrupts. _And I still don't want to be human now._

Midorima turns fully to face Kuroko, a faintly displeased look on his face which Kuroko has come to associate with himself. "Were you a merman then?"

"No." Kuroko stops to think. "No tail."

"Kappa?"

"No."

"Naiad?"

"I don't appear to be female."

"Selkie?"

"No."

"Well then, what were you?"

Hesitantly, he says, "I don't know exactly. I'm just... just part of the water."

"Hmph. A water spirit of some sort then."

"I don't know. We don't have names." He wouldn't have known any of the other names Midorima had thrown at him if not for a book on mythology Momoi had slipped into his growing pile of books. It was an interesting read, but he didn't feel like he belonged to any of the groups of mythological creatures described in it. As he had said, he had simply been part of the water.

"As far as I can tell, you are most definitely human now. So either you somehow managed to turn into a human being or you _are_ a human being with a problem."

"But I don't want to be human." Kuroko responds, his gaze sliding past Midorima to fall on the Shigaraki tanuki banished to the far side of room. "I want to go back to the water."

"Well, you most certainly won't achieve that by drowning yourself. You'll just be dead."

"Midorima-kun!" Momoi hisses, her eyes blazing and a hand raised to smack his shoulder.

Midorima glances at her, unfazed, then looks back at Kuroko. "Remember this: You are human now and humans need to breathe in oxygen, not water. Putting your head underwater and breathing in will not solve anything. It will only kill you."

\---

"God! Midorima-kun has no tact." Momoi seethes all the way back home, her hands thrown up in frustration as she talks.

Kuroko nods at all the right places, but for the most part he isn't listening. It has been two months since he has been stuck as a human and some part of him knows that he may never return to being part of the water ever again. It hasn't stopped him from trying though. But as Midorima had said, all he had been achieving by doing all this was a possible death and nothing but trouble for Aomine and Momoi.

"I'm sorry." he says quietly and Momoi whips her head around to look at him, her hair flying up around her face, each pale pink strand brilliantly illuminated by the setting sun.

"You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about." Momoi declares, taking his hand in hers and gripping it tightly.

"But–"

Another hand descends on his head, ruffling his hair vigorously and Aomine only stops when Kuroko stops trying to open his mouth to utter more apologies. "What she said. You have nothing to be sorry about. The drowning thing's a hassle, but we're getting used to it and we'll work on it. All you have to do now is concentrate on learning how to be human."

Kuroko's still not sure that he actually wants to be human, but he gets that the two of them are trying to cheer him up and it would be an asshole move to bring that up now. For complete strangers, they had been kind to him and had taken him in when he could have been left on the beach to cope with being human all by himself. Without the both of them, he could have died immediately, drowning while trying to get the water to reclaim him.

Sometimes, he actually wonders if death might be the solution to returning to the water, but then he thinks about Aomine and Momoi and how hard they try to resuscitate him every time they catch him underwater. They would be sad if he died and left them alone, which is strange considering the short period of time they had known each other for. But in these two short months, he had gotten to know them and he just knows that if he drowned, it wouldn’t be fair to them.

There has to be another way to return to the water without the fear of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if there will be any shipping coming up later, but I'm leaning towards AoKuro at the moment. I'll update the tags accordingly as this progresses.


	2. Chapter 2

It is a cloudy day for summer although the wind is stagnant, barely strong enough to ruffle the edges of Momoi's dress or lift the lip of her floppy sun hat. Still, she holds onto her hat with one hand as her other hand reaches out for Kuroko's, slipping her fingers in between his. Another hand grabs his free hand in a potentially bone-crushing grip and Kuroko opens his mouth to object.

"Brace yourself!" Aomine shouts before Kuroko can get a word out, his eyes blazing bright and his teeth flashing in a smile, the kind that Kuroko associates with little kids, the ones aged five and below when faced with something they like.

Then the wave hits and Kuroko finds himself waist-deep in water, his hair sopping wet and his eyes full of stinging saltwater from the aftermath of the impact. His first instinct is to panic, his senses screaming at him to get back into the water, wondering why the wave had left him behind when it receded back into the sea. He blinks away the water rapidly, every muscle in his body tensed to dive back into the sea when he remembers the pressure against his hands and the two people beside him. He can feel them watching him, ready to pull him back if he showed any signs of plunging into the sea.

It had been a risky move to bring him here in the first place, where he would be surrounded by nothing but water, which was what he had been trying to drown in during the past few months. Although, things had changed during that period of time. On a good day, Kuroko could enter the bathroom and the door wouldn't open again until he was done and walked out of his own accord.

While the square of plastic occupying a corner of the living room floor was still there, it remained dry six days out of seven. When it had stayed dry for a record-breaking seven days, Momoi had suggested a trip to the sea, which Kuroko knew she had been discussing with Aomine behind his back. It was summer after all, she reasoned, which meant that they had to go to the sea. Kuroko didn't quite understand the association but he couldn't quite refuse when Momoi was obviously looking forward to it.

Besides, it would be nice to see the sea again.

"You alright there?" Aomine lifts Kuroko out of the water when it looks like he isn't going to make a break for it any time soon and Kuroko feels a bit like a wet rag dangling from his outstretched hand.

"Yes." he tells Aomine nonetheless, settling his weight back on his feet as Aomine brings their linked hands back down.

"Well, you better be because here comes another one."

This time, Kuroko has enough sense to keep his eyes and mouth squeezed shut when the wave crashes into them with considerably more force than the previous one. As the seawater reaches high above his head, he hears it sing, just barely, before it breaks into droplets behind him. He misses this, having all this water around him, not still like the water surrounding him when he sits in the bathtub, but coursing with energy and threatening to wash him off his feet. The water is alive – it always has been.

There is laughter in the air and he turns his attention towards Momoi, barely making out her figure through the seawater that had managed to get into his eyes. Her hat is gone, lost to the sea, and her hair falls in sopping ropes around her face. Their hands are soaked with water, wet skin slipping against each other, but he can feel her radiating with life, her fingers moving against his as she gets her balance back. She is lovely as always, but there is just something about seeing her bright under the summer sun that brings a smile to his lips.

As Kuroko blinks what is left of the water out of his eyes, he spots something familiar bobbing in the sea before him and he slips his hand out of hers, stretching to retrieve Momoi's sun hat. The tips of his fingertips barely meet the edge of the hat before it drifts away, the ripples from his failed attempt carrying it further away from him.

"It's okay, Kuroko-kun. I got it." There is movement beside him as Momoi leaves his side, rippling through the water and making a grab for her hat. The straw hat is soaked through, liquid tendrils stretching downwards as she lifts it clear of the water and shakes it out. Still damp, it goes back onto her head.

"Satsuki, another wave's coming!" Aomine calls out to her as she wades back to them, the waves she makes of her own reaching up to her chest. His grip on Kuroko tightens as he tracks her movements, her lithe form cutting a swath through the sea's surface as she starts swimming back to them.

The wave hits just as Momoi is within reach, its impact sending her straight into them, and suddenly Kuroko finds himself underwater.

_Take a breath,_ his instincts whisper to him, _you'll be fine._

_No, I'll be dead,_ his logic retorts, sounding oddly like Midorima in his head.

_You're part of the water._ He can feel the curve of the water around him, fitting him right into their midst. _Part of us._

When he moves his arm blindly, his eyes squeezed tight against the saltwater, the water moves with him, pressing in close to his skin. If he strains, maybe, just maybe, he can hear the water singing around him. He needs to get closer to it. He needs to–

Fingers close around his forearm and Kuroko finds himself breaking the surface of the sea, his mouth opening in a gasp to let air back into his lungs. The sunlight assaults his eyes when he finally opens them and blinds him momentarily. He is vaguely aware that he is in a standing position although his feet are not quite touching the sand.

"Tetsu!" There are hands on him, digging into the skin on his shoulders and keeping him upright. "Damn it, Tetsu, I thought we got over this drowning thing. Satsuki, tell me he's still alive."

Kuroko's vision returns to him, blotchy at first then all at once, and the first thing he sees before him is Momoi, hatless again and glancing up at Aomine sharply.

"Kuroko-kun?" she enunciates his name carefully as she peers into his face. "Are you alright?"

Kuroko blinks the remaining splotches of light away and wriggles a bit, trying to find something relatively solid under his feet. His toes brush against the sand, kicking up grains of sand up into the water, and he relaxes. "I think so."

Aomine drops him back onto his own feet and Momoi's lips curve up into a wavering smile. "Let's get back to the shore, Kuroko-kun."

Her eyes dart back to Aomine and there is an odd second of silence between the both of them before Kuroko hears Aomine say, "I guess that's enough water for today, Kuroko."

Momoi takes Kuroko's hand again as they head back to shore together. Her sun hat is nowhere to be seen and Kuroko hopes it finds its way back to shore too.

\---

"Now this is a rare sight. I haven't seen the both of you in a while."

Aomine scowls at Wakamatsu, who exaggerates his shock from behind his desk. "What is that supposed to mean? I just had a shift yesterday."

Wakamatsu makes a great deal of avoiding Aomine as he walks over, raising his hands in surrender as Aomine bullies him out of his seat. It is the end of his shift anyway so Wakamatsu concedes his seat without much argument, grinning in a way that makes Aomine want to punch him for the sake of it.

"What Wakamatsu means to say is that the both of you haven't had a shift together in a very long while." Imayoshi translates from where he sits, a safe distance away from where Aomine grabs at Wakamatsu as he passes. "Have Momoi and you been arguing again?"

Aomine releases Wakamatsu, who takes the opportunity to retreat to the back room, and glances at Momoi. She hovers by Imayoshi's seat as his replacement for the next shift, and her eyes meet his.

"Nah," Aomine says shortly. "It's just a babysitting thing."

That gets Wakamatsu back in the room, and even Imayoshi blinks at that.

"Forgive me, but I had no idea that you and Momoi were-"

"We're not!" Aomine yells, hearing Momoi's shriller tones echo his from across the room. "That would just be way gross, man." he adds.

"I think I should be the one saying that." Momoi sniffs. "I love you, Dai-chan, but not in that way."

"So then about that babysitting thing you mentioned?" Imayoshi prods, raising an eyebrow.

Momoi pats him on the shoulder in her most placating way. "Let's just leave it at that, Imayoshi-san."

It is a slow day at the police station after Imayoshi and Wakamatsu leave, where they are only visited once by an elderly lady looking for her missing purse (which Aomine finds after riffling through the lost and found box). Momoi types up reports, going through the stack piled up on her desk with remarkable efficiency. Just to be sure, Aomine looks at his desk, and finds it empty, missing the conspicuous stack of work that Momoi's desk has. There was a reason why Imayoshi and Momoi shared a desk after all, and he and Wakamatsu shared the other.

When the numbers on the clock on the wall flicker over to 4:00, Aomine yawns widely and gets to his feet.

"Going out for my rounds." he reports, giving Momoi a lazy salute on his way out.

When Aomine opens the front door, he is greeted by a strange sight. At first, he thinks it is a fight and there is an instant rush of blood to his head that burns off any lingering traces of languidness he had. _This_ is what he lives for, the chance to knock some heads together in the name of peacekeeping, not boring old paperwork.

Then he deflates after taking a closer look at the two participants. One of them is in the same police uniform he wears, and the other in plain clothes, but there is no doubt that he recognises both of them.

"What are the both of you doing?" Aomine says, giving them a sour look. "Kise, are you finally being arrested?"

It most definitely looks like an arrest, or at least an attempt at an arrest. Sakurai has both hands fastened around Kise's arm, his body angled towards the direction of the police station as he valiantly tries and fails to get Kise to go along with him. Kise, on the other hand, looks completely unfazed and visibly brightens up at the sight of Aomine.

"No, I dropped by for a visit." Kise says, cheerily enough for someone with a police officer hanging off one arm. "Since I was in town and all."

"Right. Are you here to visit Satsuki and me, or the jail cells? And Sakurai, what are you even bringing him in for?"

Sakurai drops Kise's arm and straightens up at the sound of his name. "I found him lurking around the police station. I thought he was being suspicious."

"Huh, good call. Go ahead and lock him up."

Aomine feels a slap on his back as Momoi appears at his side, looking over his shoulder at the commotion outside. "Don't be mean, Dai-chan. It's been a while since we've seen Ki-chan."

He watches as Momoi and Kise trade waves while wearing the same matching smile, all charm and flashing teeth like stars in a toothpaste commercial. The sheer force of it sends Sakurai scuttling away, mumbling apologies and something about going back on patrol. Aomine just rolls his eyes, feeling an impending headache building up at the back of his head.

"Did you just come back from your flight? Where did you go this time?" Momoi asks Kise.

"Nowhere far. It was just South Korea and back again. I got Aominecchi and you souvenirs!"

It is then that Aomine realises there is a luggage bag at Kise's side, abnormally large and on par with Momoi's own when they go on trips. It takes a moment for him to put two and two together before it dawns on him.

"You're not staying with us again." Aomine interrupts their conversation, horrified. "God, don't you have anywhere else to go?"

Kise shrugs, seemingly unfazed at being found out. "But I like staying with you guys."

"And we like having you over." Momoi backs him up, looking at Aomine reproachfully.

"We already have Kuroko." Aomine hisses in her ear. "Send him to Midorima or something."

"Our house is big enough." Momoi argues back, pulling him down by the sleeve. "Besides, he could watch Kuroko for us."

"Do you already have someone over?" Kise asks, watching their exchange intently. There is an over-bright gleam in his eyes, which are brimming over with curiosity, and Aomine knows that nothing good ever comes out of that look.

"No–"

Momoi swats at Aomine's mouth. "Yes, actually! It's a long story and we're on the clock so could you do us a favour?"

That definitely sparks Kise's interest and he nods. He leans towards Momoi conspiratorially, and that is when Aomine decides that he has had enough.

"Later." he throws out at both of them before stalking down the street.

\---

Momoi is back at her desk when Aomine returns. The sky at his back blooms indigo as he storms through the front door and tosses his things onto his own desk. For a while, nothing but the scritch-scratch of Momoi's pen fills the air as she initials form after form.

"Was it wrong to let Ki-chan know about Kuroko-kun?" she breaks the silence eventually. "Midorin knows about him."

"Midorima's a doctor. We had to let him take a look at him."

"He's a doctor," Momoi agrees, "But he's also our friend. And so is Ki-chan."

Aomine says nothing. She can hear him swivelling in his chair, probably facing away from her like the five year old brat he really was.

Momoi puts down her pen and shuffles the last of her paperwork into order. "You know we've been keeping an eye out for any reports of missing people who fit his description. It's been more than a month since we've had him around and we still don't know where he came from. It almost sounds plausible, that he came from the sea."

"I found him there." Aomine interjects, almost sulkily.

"I know." she replies patiently. "But Dai-chan, Kuroko-kun's a person of his own right. He's bound to meet people other than you, me, and Midorin. Just because we're taking care of him now doesn't mean that we're going to do this forever."

Aomine falls silent again, which Momoi thinks is a minor miracle in itself because Aomine is never quiet when there are grievances to be aired. It bothers her slightly, just like this whole issue with Kuroko. She likes Kuroko, and her fondness for him when he is not drowning grows by the day, but he reminds her too much of someone else, mixed in with memories from ten years ago of basketball, and winning, winning, winning until the day that they didn't.

They had given him the name "Kuroko", but Momoi hopes that he never lives up to his name, that his path diverges somewhere in the middle and he lives out a completely different life. She isn't quite sure that Aomine hopes for the same thing.

"Just," she stumbles, searching for the right thing to say to him. "Be careful, Dai-chan. Don't get too attached."

Aomine's back is still to her, but she is relieved all the same when he answers her this time. "You think too much, Satsuki." Then he spins back to face her with an accusing look. "And you're one to talk about being attached. I haven't been able to get rid of you since elementary school."

"Without me, you wouldn't have _lived_ past elementary school." Momoi retorts. "You may be good at basketball, but there isn't much else you're good at. Life, for example."

"You might have a point there." Aomine concedes grudgingly. "But even you have to admit that I was, _am_ , damn good at basketball."

"Try saying that again when you finally have a decent lead over Kagamin."

Momoi turns away just as Aomine raises his middle finger at her, picking up her stack of completed forms and moving to the row of cabinets by the wall. Once she packed up, they could clock out and go home. She wonders if Kise had managed to reach their house safely and if he had already met Kuroko. What would he think of Kuroko?

"Hey, Satsuki."

"Hm?"

"Do you think Kuroko might be any good at basketball?"

Her hand stills, then relaxes as she slides the last of the papers into place. "I don't know."

\---

Kise calls them on the way home and Aomine snatches Momoi's phone away the moment she puts it to her ear.

"Kise?" Aomine says, leaning away from Momoi as she makes a grab for her phone.

"Aominecchi? I thought I called Momocchi."

"Yeah, you did. She's here too."

Beside him, Momoi rolls her eyes, all too used to Aomine's appalling lack of manners. Back in the past, she used to put up more of a fuss when he stole her phone and other stuff. Aomine misses that sometimes. It had been more fun then, until he made her angry enough to hit lower.

"How's Kuroko-kun?" she asks, loud enough for Kise to hear.

"He's in the bathroom, like you said. He's..." There is a frown in Kise's voice, and Aomine feels his eyebrows furrow in response to that. "Sleeping?"

"Sleeping?" Aomine echoes and Momoi shoots him a questioning look. _At least he isn't drowning,_ he mouths at her. _Yet._ To Kise, he says, "Get him out of there anyway."

"Ehh? But he doesn't know who I am and things could get awkward and-" There is a yelp from the other side of the phone and Aomine hears a faint splash in the background.

"Kise? What happened?"

"Your boy has no sense of self-preservation." Kise hisses into the phone.

"Is he drowning himself again?"

"What? No! He just woke up, saw me, and stared back. I mean, shouldn't other people be freaking out more in situations like this?"

_"Who are you?"_ Kuroko's voice filters over through the phone, calm and polite, the complete opposite of Kise's.

"Gah!" Kise yells. Aomine holds the phone away from his ear, wincing.

"Put Kuroko on the phone." he tells Kise.

There is a bit of shuffling from the other end before he hears Kuroko say, "Aomine-kun?"

"Hey, Kuroko. Now listen, don't panic or anything–"

"I'm not."

"–but the blond airhead over at your side is Kise Ryouta, an, uh, acquaintance of Satsuki and me."

_"Acquaintance? Say that I'm a friend at least! A friend!"_ he hears Kise's indignant reply in the background.

"Shut up, blondie." Aomine shouts into the receiver.

"Aomine-kun, my ears."

"My bad, Tetsu." Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Momoi shoot him another look and he raises a hand to pacify her. "Back to the topic at hand, he's harmless. Just get along with him until we're back home, alright?"

"Okay." There is no trace of wariness in Kuroko's voice when he replies, and Aomine feels like maybe Kise was right about his sense of self-preservation. They probably should sit him down one day and teach him about stranger danger.

"Pass the phone back to Kise." More shuffling as the phone switches hands again and Aomine speaks before Kise can get a word in. "Alright. Kise, here's what you need to do: Nothing. Don't cause trouble for Kuroko, don't cause trouble for Satsuki and me, just stay put and don't do anything."

"You have so little trust in me, Aominecchi."

"Yeah, well, you hardly inspire trust in anyone." Aomine snorts back. Without saying goodbye, he shoves the phone back in Momoi's direction.

"Ki-chan? Hello, Ki-chan?" She makes a disappointed noise and puts her phone away. "I can't believe you hung up on him."

"I did? Might have been an accident." Aomine shrugs.

"I hope they get along. It'll be nice for Kuroko-kun to get to know more people." Momoi remarks lightly. "Maybe he could get out more often, instead of being cooped up at home."

"You sure about that, Satsuki? The sea is right there, you know."

"He'll be fine." Momoi says firmly. "I'll think of something."


End file.
